Lee-Divine McCrae was almost home from Walnut Ridge High School one afternoon in March when an
insult and a fight ended with the crack of a gun.

“F--- Courtney!” someone shouted, evoking the memory of Courtney Wallace, a 15-year-old
Columbus boy who had been gunned down in an East Side neighborhood in August 2007. A 17-year-old
youth, jealous because his girlfriend had been hanging out with Wallace and another boy, had
ambushed those two boys and started shooting.

McCrae was only 10 when Wallace was killed and had nothing to do with it. But bad feelings
linger, and insults — even against a dead teen — come easily in his neighborhood. So on March 21,
the 16-year-old, who had been walking with a group of friends, found himself in the middle of a
fight with another group at E. Livingston Avenue and Simpson Drive.

He started running when he saw one teen pull a gun.

“He went to his pants and grabbed his gun,” said McCrae, who goes by “Dee.” “I was running
across the street when I turned around. I heard two shots, and I went limping.”

The bullet pierced the back of his left leg and shot out the other side, just above his knee. He
hobbled home to his family’s apartment and bled all over his mother’s kitchen.

He didn’t know the boy who shot him. He’d never had words with him. No one has been charged.
Months later, though, McCrae is most angry about the friend with him that day.

The friend had a gun in his own waistband but never pulled it out, he complained.

“I trusted him with my life, and he didn’t do a thing.”

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McCrae — along with more than half of the 18 youths ages 14 to 19 who were shot in the first
third of this year in Columbus — had a juvenile record at the time. He was charged with assault in
January after he tried to punch a police officer in the face but struck his shoulder instead. He
was found delinquent in June and put on probation for eight months.

He went AWOL from his mother’s house in July. When McCrae spoke to a
Dispatch reporter in August, the court had issued a warrant for his arrest on that
violation. He was picked up on Sept. 11 and now is in the Tri-State Youth Academy in Ashland
County.

After he was shot, McCrae tried to obtain a gun for self-defense. “I felt like I needed it,” he
said.

But he didn’t have the money for a “big” gun — something bigger than the .22-caliber weapon he
could afford — so he never got one, he said.

“I got shot with something big, so I wanted something big.”

His wound has healed. Night terrors have faded, as have his worries about getting shot
again.

He used to do “stupid stuff,” he said, like going into other neighborhoods where he has beefs.
Now, “I stay away,” he said. “I stay in my own lanes.”

Still, he knows he could be shot again — “probably over some words.”

“I get shot, I get shot,” he said. “I don’t think about it. I try not to.”

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The bullet that passed through Kyree Bell’s left forearm two weeks after his 15th birthday was
far from the first time he had seen the power of a gun.

When he was 6, someone fired several rounds into his next-door neighbor’s house as he slept on
the South Side.

Three years later, a police officer shot a suspect outside his apartment on the North Side. He
and his twin sister were still wailing when their mother was finally able to get home from work to
comfort them.

His 19-year-old brother is in jail awaiting trial on charges of aggravated robbery, kidnapping
and robbery, all committed with a gun.

In March, Bell was with friends in the doorway of a McDonald’s in the Driving Park neighborhood
when four to six youths drove up and started shooting. He and his friends ran.

When one fell and Bell stopped to help him up, a bullet struck his arm, entering and exiting
without his even realizing he had been shot. It wasn’t until he got inside and took off his jacket
that he saw the blood. He was treated at a hospital but shrugs off what happened. Today, his scar
is just a small blemish on his arm.

“It happened. It’s over now,” he said from his East Side home. “There’s nothing you can really
do.”

When he spoke to a
Dispatch reporter in August, the high-school junior said he was focused on playing point
guard for Columbus Africentric Early College’s basketball team. Now, he’s on electronic monitoring
at home, awaiting trial and accused of robbing a 65-year-old woman on Sept. 17.

Bell said he doesn’t know why he was shot in March or if he was even the target. Nobody has been
charged. Detectives said none of the teens in Bell’s group that day seemed interested in tracking
down the shooter.

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As Antwan Milton told the story of when he was shot, he played with his short black hair. That’s
what he was doing on June 13 at his uncle’s house near South Linden when a bullet went through his
forearm and lodged in his head.

Having his arm up probably slowed down the slug, doctors told him. The bullet remains inside his
head, behind his left ear, but doctors told him it will work its way to the surface.

Milton, 15, was with two other boys and two girls, all 17 to 20, when someone shot him. No one
has been charged, and the gun was never found.

“I was just sitting in the living room, (and) the gun went off,” he said. “I don’t know who did
it.”

The Linden-McKinley STEM Academy freshman said he didn’t feel anything at first. A 911 call at
12:30 a.m. recorded a man frantically yelling, “Go get the keys!” and other people screaming in the
background. Dead air follows that.

A tattoo on his arm — “RIP ANTWAN,” in memory of his father, who died last year — now has a scar
marking the P.

Earlier this year, before he was shot, Milton was found delinquent of misdemeanor assault after
he pushed a school administrator at Linden-McKinley. That case ended with anger-management classes
and a letter of apology.

Someone shot one of Milton’s cousins in the hand at a party this year; and a friend, 15-year-old
Kaewaun Coleman, was fatally shot in January. But Milton said he is not afraid of guns. Some teens
need to have guns, he said, so “they can kill or scare” their enemies.